Easy, Homemade Cherry Pie Recipe

How to make cherry pie from scratch with a lightly sweetened filling of fresh (or frozen) cherries, vanilla, and almond extract. It’s to die for. Jump to the Homemade Cherry Pie Recipe or watch our quick recipe video showing you how to make it.

This cherry pie recipe is so easy — All you need to do is mix, fill and bake. The hardest part is pitting the cherries. For that, you might want to buy a cherry pitter or if you’re like us, cheat and use one of our suggestions below for how to pit cherries without a cherry pitter.

How to Make Homemade Cherry Pie

Stir cherries with sugar, corn starch, lemon juice, vanilla and almond extracts then stir. Roll out a pie crust (or use store-bought), fill then top with another crust. Bake and cool. It’s that easy.

To be honest, the hardest part is actually waiting for the pie to cool — you really want to wait 2 to 3 hours before cutting into the pie. We know — it’s torture!

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Our Flaky Pie Crust Recipe and Video might be helpful. It’s an all-butter crust that’s ultra flaky. We even included a video to show you how to make it.

Using Sweet or Tart Cherries

As far as the cherries go, we like to use fresh cherries, but if you need to, use thawed frozen or canned/jarred cherries. (We share notes for both options in the recipe below). Both sweet and tart cherries will work well in this pie. We usually use sweet because fresh tart cherries are almost impossible to find where we live. No matter which you use, be sure to check for how sweet they are then adjust the sugar accordingly. We love serving each slice with freshly whipped cream, but ice cream would be divine.

How to Pit Cherries Without a Cherry Pitter

We have a small kitchen. That means that we only buy what we need on a weekly basis and while we would love to eat a slice of this cherry pie every night that just can’t happen. So, we don’t have a cherry pitter in the house. That didn’t stop us, though. We just looked around and figured out two ways to pit cherries without a cherry pitter.

On the top, you’ll see we used a chopstick. We used the thicker round end to push the pit out of each cherry. The second option was to use a small piping tip. Place it onto the work surface then push the cherry down onto the tip — the pit pops right out. Of the two, we preferred using chopsticks. Both work, but the chopsticks were a little less messy.

Recipe updated, originally posted May 2013. Since posting this in 2013, we have tweaked the recipe to be more clear and added a quick recipe video. – Adam and Joanne

Easy, Homemade Cherry Pie Recipe

PREP 30mins

COOK 60mins

TOTAL 1hr 30mins

Making cherry pie is easy – all you need is a little patience when pitting the cherries. We promise it’s worth it. You can use sweet cherries, sour cherries or a combination of both, just remember to dial the sugar back or up depending on what you choose.

You can buy a cherry pitter, however, if you do not have one try using the thicker round end of a chopstick to push the pits out of the middle of each cherry. Another option is to push each cherry down onto a piping tip. The sugar amount for this recipe varies depending on how sweet your cherries are. Add to your taste. We like to use fresh cherries for this, but you can use canned (see note below).

Directions

In a large bowl, stir sugar, cornstarch, vanilla extract, almond extract, lemon juice and the salt together then add cherries. Gently toss to combine. Set aside.

Prepare and Fill Crust

Remove half of dough from refrigerator and let sit at room temperature for 5 minutes. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to a 13-inch (1/8-inch thick) circle. (Occasionally, check if dough is sticking to the surface — add a small amount of flour when necessary).

Check for size by inverting pie dish over dough round. Look for a 1-inch edge around the pie dish. Carefully press the dough into the dish.

Spoon cherry pie filling into pie crust. Discard most of the liquid pooled at the bottom of the bowl. Dot filling with little squares of cold butter.

Top Pie

Roll out second half of dough then top pie. Use a knife or pair of kitchen scissors to trim dough to within 3/4-inch of the edge of the dish.

Fold edges of top crust underneath edges of bottom crust, pressing the edge to seal it so that it creates a thicker, 1/4-inch border that rests on the lip of the dish. Then, crimp edges by pressing the pointer finger of one hand against the edge of the dough from the inside of the dish while gently pressing with two knuckles of the other hand from the outside (see photo, we know that was wordy — you can see us do it in our pie crust recipe video, too). Refrigerate dough at least 20 minutes or freeze for 5 minutes before baking.

Bake Pie

Just before baking, make egg wash by whisking egg yolk and cream together in a small bowl. Use a pastry brush to brush over the top crust. Then, sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of sugar. Then, cut 3 to 4 slits in top of pie.

Bake for 20 minutes then reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F and bake an additional 30 to 40 minutes longer, or until the crust is golden and the filling is thick and bubbling. Cool pie at least 2 hours, preferably 3, before cutting to allow filling to set.

Note – It might be helpful to bake the pie on a baking sheet covered in aluminum foil so any juices that drip over the pie dish are caught.

Adam and Joanne's Tips

For canned cherries: Use 4 cups of canned or bottled cherries, drained with about 1/3 cup cherry juice reserved for adding to the cherry filling.

For frozen cherries: Use 4 cups of thawed cherries, drained with about 1/3 cup cherry juice reserved for adding to the cherry filling.

Nutrition facts: The nutrition facts provided below are estimates. We have used the USDA Supertracker recipe calculator to calculate approximate values.

If you make this recipe, snap a photo and hashtag it #inspiredtaste — We love to see your creations on Instagram and Facebook! Find us: @inspiredtaste

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I made 3 individual pies with only 500gms of cherries, I have never pitted cherries before and using the chopstick worked wonerfully. I didn’t make my pastry rounds big enough but still worked and tasted delicious.

Turned out amazing. I had to use Oregon tart red cherries in water (3 cans) because the cherries are out of season. I used about a 1/2 can of the water. I did forget to put the bit of butter on the top of the cherries before the top crust. The pie crust was perfect. My husband and kids loved it even though they initially refused to taste it. The next day my husband was trying to figure out where I hid the leftovers.

Chopstick method worked great for me. I poked the end to break skin and then flipped to pull stem and/or push out pit. Did about seven pounds of them. But I had only prepped enough dough for one pie. Followed the crust recipe. I could have used a bit more dough for my 9” cast iron skillet (pie pan MIA). Modified the fresh cherry filing recipe only slightly. Cooked them a bit along with other ingredients and a few ounces of spiced rum. Neglected to fully read the base crust recipe for all details. Poured warm filing into crust and did not chill before popping in oven. Still turned out with a thin crispy bottom.

I don’t know how this pie is going to turn out because it’s in the oven right now but I just gotta say that the chopstick pitting method didn’t work for me either. Went with the old tried and true paperclip method. Slow but helps keep cherries intact.

So I don’t have a cherry pitter and I tried to use the chopstick method and let me just say-it was a complete disaster! The first four cherries I tried just fell apart from the small point of pressure that the chopstick uses. I didn’t feel like trying to search for my piping tips, and I had reservationss about trying that out anyway because of my attempt with the chopstick. Instead I grabbed one of my hard, thick straws made for tumblers, the ones that have the little rounded circle to keep the straw from falling out of the lid (just look up tumbler straws to get an idea of what I mean if this description made little sense). THIS WORKED LIKE A CHARM. No splitting of the cherries, and the simple movement of twisting with little pressure had my pits popping out in no time.

Just made this recipe with Washington Rainier cherries and fresh blueberries. I didn’t change anything except I used store bought pie crusts. When I took the pie out it was very liquidy so I just drained the excess from the pie and when it was cooled it was fine. I love the addition of the blueberries it tasted amazing with the cherries😊

The filling turned out great with my frozen sweet cherries. top of pie crust was perfect – bottom crust not even close to being cooked. Maybe it is because I put a cookie sheet under pie to catch any spill (which there was none of) 🙁 Will have to try again – guess I am not a pie baker!

I made this pie with a quart jar of sweet cherries purchased from an Amish stand in Michigan. I only had 3 cups of cherries. I used 1/2 cup of sugar as they were already sweet. I forgot to add the butter on top but the pie was great anyway. The filling did not run out and the consistency was perfect. The almond flavor was just right. I would definitely make this again. I did not use the crust recipe supplied though.

Made this pie last night. I had to use 1 can of cherry pie filling since I didn’t have enough cherrys for the full 5 cups I also used some brown sugar.It turned out great,and looked beautiful My husband loved it. Made my regular crisco crust Next time I’ll use your crust.And all fresh cherrys. Thanks for all the good tips

I have made this recipe twice once with frozen and once with fresh and both times they ended up in a watery mess…. I am not new to making pies I have made them all the time since I was little but this is stumping me as to why it keeps ending with tons of liquid….. any thoughts??? Thanks so much!!

Hi Gina, When you taking out the pie, was the filling simmering? It’s only when the filling simmers inside the pie that the cornstarch has a chance to thicken the liquid. If you continue to have the issue, you could boil the liquid before adding it to the pie.

Loved the taste of this recipe & it was a big hit at our neighborhood 4th of July cookout. I did find that I *had* to cook down the cherries with the tablespoon of lemon juice, then add the rest of the ingredients to thicken over heat a few more minutes. The first time I made it, the cherries did not soften in the oven, and there was no “sauce” after baking. I also used fresh sweet cherries, and reduced the sugar to 1/2 cup. So my changes were: cook the cherries and Tbsp lemon juice over low heat for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the sugar (or Splenda, if cooking for diabetics), cornstarch, salt, and extracts, then stir over med-low heat for ~5 minutes more until sauce thickens and becomes that sweet goopy yumminess. If the sauce is too thick, add water, a Tbsp at a time (I had to add ~4 Tbsp) and stir. Too thin, and add a bit more cornstarch. Let filling cool, then proceed with the rest of the recipe!

I made this pie with fresh cherries the first time around and it was perfection! However, I just made it again with frozen cherries from our harvest earlier this year and it seems the recipe is missing some info. The recipe tells you to drain the cherries and reserve 1/3 cup… for what? where does this 1/3 cup of fluid go???

Made this yesterday. I had a very deep dish pan, so I added more cherries and adjusted everything. This recipe has less sugar than the others I found, which I liked! The crust was the best I’ve ever made, in terms of handling, flakiness, and taste!

Hi Fran, you should be fine using a 10-inch pie dish. Ours is a 9-inch dish in the recipe video so the extra inch should not cause any issues. For the filling, you could try increasing by half — so combine 1 1/2 times the filling ingredients called for in the recipe.

I just had a question about the filling–I’ve noticed a lot of other recipes call for cooking the cherries before adding them to the pie crust. Just wondering what the difference is?

I’m also going to be using frozen cherries and I see you call to thaw them first–a friend of mine told me not to thaw them first but this seems like a mistake to me, as I feel it will add way too much liquid to the pie to throw them in frozen!

Hi Samantha, Recipes that call for cooking the cherry filling beforehand are doing this to make sure that the thickener (in our case this is cornstarch) has time to work. We have not found this is needed in our recipe, but you could certainly add the step if you wanted to. If you are using frozen cherries, we recommend thawing. Otherwise, you will not be able to control the amount of liquid added to your pie. You can always save the reserved liquid for something else (maybe cook it down into a syrup to drizzle over the pie?)

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